Portraits
by mysteryNobodie
Summary: After the War, Hermione comes back to Hogwarts to help lost souls, including the deceased Severus Snape - SSHG short story, DH complient
1. Chapter 1

This is a short story that was originally a description of one of my drawings on DA that I brought back because I rather like it and I'm thinking of doing a little more with it...

By the way, this is one of those rare moments when I accept that Snape did die, so beware!

..

The War was over and fear had been replaced with peace. The wizard's world was trying to slowly recover. The school of Hogwarts had been rebuilt and eventually students and staff had resumed their activities once again.  
Hermione Granger still visited the school once in a while, whenever she had some free time, to help out professor (now headmistress) McGonagall, even though the witch kept assuring her that every problem they could possibly have was under control and that she should take her time to recover herself. But like many knew, she had a bigger heart than brain, and she was the brightest witch of her age.  
One particular day she came inside McGonagall's office asking for professor Snape. Severus Snape had died in the War, but his spirit had been preserved on a portrait, much like Dumbledore's, the previous Headmaster. Minerva wasn't very surprised; it wasn't the first time she had asked for professor Snape. But Minerva gave her the typical answer she always gave her, that professor Snape wasn't ready to receive visitors and that she should come to see him some other day.  
Hermione would normally reply with an "I see" and never touch the subject again, but that day, for Minerva's surprise, the witch insisted on the importance of her visit and begged her to see him.  
Professor Dumbledore, who usually hang on the portraits of McGonagall's office, was also surprised. But the old wizard, like always, understood her intentions and softened his expression before convincing McGonagall to lead her to professor Snape.  
The witch, still in confusion, shared an intrigued look with Hermione and Albus before doing what she had been asked.  
She lead Hermione trough a lonely and isolated corridor before stopping in front of a door.  
"He's isolated himself here" Minerva explained indicating the door "He never came out of here. He refuses to be visited by anyone... he is so depressed and desperate that he spends his days drowning in his own darkness and he won't let anyone help...please help him if you can, Hermione" she pleaded her before she left.  
Hermione knocked at the door without obtaining any response. She called him out almost in a whisper before she entered the dark and quiet room.  
"Professor...?" she quietly called out again.  
He was there, his back turned to her, trapped inside a portrait.  
Yet he did not respond to her; not a sound, not a movement...he didn't even flinch. Not even the slightest reaction, like she wasn't even there.  
After a minute, Snape heard some noises. And then complete silence again. He turned to her, his skin paler than she remembered and his eyes had lost the fiery emotion they once had. He looked at her.  
She had sat down on the floor in front of his portrait. She had a bucket of green paint near her and a paint brush in her hand. He look down, at the glass like 'wall' trapping him in the portrait, seperating her from him.  
There was a little green heart painted there. A little Slytherin heart. He reached it, his fingers brushing his side of the wall where the heart had been painted. He could feel tears in his eyes. But this weren't tears of sadness. Because even if her small gesture was for some others completly simple-  
"Thank you for protecting us, Sir. Thank you for everything. Happy Birthday, professor Snape" she told him, with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.  
...even if her gesture had been simple...

...she had not abandoned him.


	2. Chapter 2

She returned.

She came back almost every week, paying him a short visit.

And from inside the portrait, he'd talk to her, listen to her, as if he were still alive. Those were the only moments he felt alive, even when his 'body' was no more than paint, because the real one was buried under a Willow tree outside of Hogwarts, near Albus' body. He wasn't even sure if his painted on form had an heart, but he could swear he felt it when she came.

She was charming, she was bright, she was so much like him- and they'd discuss, in that dark and small room, the newest researches on the Wizarding World, that she'd inform him of, and literature, books that she'd sometimes read to him, and then, after some time, personal lives would be thrown in the conversations.

Once a week, they'd open up to each other, talk about their tastes, their opinions, their feelings, their personal lives.

He started seeing her as an adult, and he noticed how she cherished him and admired him like no other human being had shown him such affection since Lily.

That was around when he fell for her.

And then she'd tell him of her and Ron. How they were dating, and were all planning on being a big and happy Weasley family with Harry and Ginny and all the others by their side.

Those times his heart ached.

Suddenly, she was married to Weasley. Regretting it, and pregnant, she'd tell him how she believed she could've grown to love him, and him her, but that love never arrived. How, as kids, they made a mistake, affected by death and War, and ended up together like other people wanted them to, and never how they wanted it to be. Everyone expected her to be a Weasley, marry one of her best friends and have his heirs…just because it was the right thing to do; the pretty picture…yet she hated her life now.

Those times his heart was furious with the world.

She had had two children, a girl named Rose and a boy named Hugo. Freckled, with Ginger hair, and close to their father. But even when she had nothing with Ron, she could never not love her own innocent blood. She was happy to tell him of their divorce when their youngest graduated from Hogwarts. Not Ron, or Hugo or Rose had taken it badly. They were all finally happy.

And he celebrated it with her, only to confess to her in a whisper, when the slightly drunk woman had tried to touch him through the portrait, that he wanted her too.

Days passed, as they turned into months and months turned into years. Her visits were more frequent, but her hair was turning white and her skin wrinkled. He knew what that meant. She was growing old, his flower was dying.

One day, she came in very tired.

He asked her what she was doing there.

"I'm old, Sev…my children are grown up, I already have grand-children too..." she smiled "I'm here to give my final breath…"

He asked her if she didn't want to be with her family, to die in her son and daughter's arms. She merely shook her head, smiling, like the Granger he had always known. She confessed her love for him. She told him she had arranged everything with Dumbledore and McGonagall as she sat in a chair in the corner.

She leaned back and closed her eyes as she confessed she wanted to be with him. And she never opened them again.

~.~.~

No student in Hogwarts really knows what the portrait with a lonely green heart painted on it over its original paint, in that small storage room that was locked for so many years, really serves for. No figure has ever been there. But there are rumors though.

They say you can find the previous 'resident' of that portrait in the Headmaster's office, near the portraits of the headmasters Dumbledore and McGonagall, in a portrait labeled 'Headmaster: Severus Tobias Prince Snape'. It's the only portrait there where two figures can be spotted. They are almost always in a tight embrace ignoring their surroundings: there is a wizard with dark hair and a hooked nose in his 20's, and with him a curly and bushy brown haired witch the same age; _the Lovers' portrait._

-End-


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